Upsets are not caused by what happens

Upsets are something we create

When you are in a state of fear and upset, you lose both your ability to see clearly and your ability to see what works. You close down and get tunnel vision. All you can do is to fight, resist, hang on, or withdraw. Almost any action you take in a state of upset is guaranteed to make your situation worse. Upsets are very destructive.

We think that upsets are caused by what happens, but this is an illusion that creates tremendous suffering. Upsets are not caused by what happens. Upsets are a state of mind and can only exist if you are fighting and resisting what happens.

Once you discover that an upset is the result of something in you, it will change your life. It will change your life because you will then have the power to release your upsets. You will be able to restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness.

The illusion of upsets

To see the illusion of upsets, find a time when you were upset. Notice that something happened and notice how totally irrelevant your feelings were about it. No matter how upset you were, your circumstances still happened.

Now notice what would happen to the upset if, somehow, you were at peace with what happened. There would be no upset. There would be no upset, because the upset wasn't caused by what happened. The upset was caused by fighting and resisting what happened. The moment you take away the fighting and resisting, the upset disappears. You restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness.

Here is another example. Notice what would happen if someone spilled a large glass of water on you. You would be wet and you would be wet no matter how you felt about it. Your being wet is like the circumstances of your life. Your feelings are totally irrelevant.

If you are at peace with being wet, there will be no upset. You will see clearly and be very effective in handing your situation. If you fight being wet, you will be upset, and the more you fight being wet, the more upset you will be.

You can be at peace with being wet or you can be upset, but no matter what your feelings are, you are still wet. Your state of mind has nothing to do with your circumstances. Your state of mind is the result of how you relate to your circumstances.

The ability to release upsets and restore your inner peace is incredibly important. It is one of the keys to being effective in life. You do this through a process called letting go. We'll talk more about this later.

Why we get upset

So why do we get upset? We get upset and lose our ability to flow with life because our circumstances have just struck a nerve. This is why different people get upset at different things. Each person has a different set of nerves that get triggered. This is also why the same type of upsets and the same self-sabotaging behavior keep showing up in each person's life. They keep showing up because the same nerve keeps getting triggered.

Ultimately, these nerves are the suppressed childhood hurt of feeling worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, failure, or some other form of feeling "not okay." It’s not the truth that you are this way. It’s just an old suppressed hurt, but it’s a hurt that destroys love and keeps life from working.

Every self-sabotaging behavior pattern, every upset, and every area of life that isn’t working can be traced directly to the automatic, subconscious avoidance of this hurt. Finding and healing this hurt is one of the most important things you can ever do. To learn how, keep reading.